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When Social Media Ideals Backfire
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Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
Consumers increasingly pursue long-term goals with the support of social media environments, where idealized standards influence how success is defined and evaluated. Although such standards are often assumed to motivate self-improvement, we examine how exposure to idealized digital representations affects motivation during ongoing goal pursuit. Drawing on goal systems and self-regulation theories, we propose that idealized standards function as external goal-regulating systems that inflate perceived distance between one's current state and a desired goal state, undermining self-efficacy and goal attainability. Across five studies, including a large-scale text-mining analysis and four controlled experiments, we show that idealized representations weaken motivation not by increasing perceived effort, but by inflating perceived goal distance and eroding self-efficacy. We further demonstrate that these effects depend on how goals are construed. Activating a performance-oriented mindset amplifies the negative impact of idealized standards, whereas activating a mastery-oriented mindset attenuates it. Finally, we identify a content-design intervention that mitigates the motivational costs of idealized standards: emphasizing the means of goal attainment rather than idealized end states preserves motivation despite exposure to idealized goals.
Descrição
Wagner, R. L., Pinto, D. C., Shuqair, S., Valenzuela, A., & Babin, B. J. (2026). When Social Media Ideals Backfire: How Idealized Digital Standards Undermine Self-Efficacy and Goal Attainability. Psychology and Marketing. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.70172 --- %ABS3%
Palavras-chave
digital environments goal pursuit idealized standards perceived attainability self-efficacy self-regulation Applied Psychology Marketing SDG 3 - Good Health and Well-being SDG 8 - Decent Work and Economic Growth